Cappuccino cupcakes

For a coffee-lover’s birthday, I used a recipe from The Cupcake Bible (one of my favorite books – I am forever grateful to my former neighbor for telling me about it) to make these cute cappuccino cupcakes. The base is chocolate cake from a mix, but you add in coffee liqueur and even brewed coffee! The frosting is made from scratch, and uses more of the liqueur. These were a bit messy because after baking, you poke little holes in the cupcakes and pour some liqueur over the tops. It doesn’t soak in quite as quickly as you hope!

On top is shaved chocolate, which let me tell you: shaving chocolate is REALLY, REALLY difficult!! I froze the chocolate bars but they still melted against my hands and didn’t want to shave. I am definitely not going pro with that skill. I used espresso chocolate bars, even, and on top are pieces of an espresso chocolate bar made by a cute company that stamps hearts on every square. Perfect!

I don’t like coffee/espresso myself, so I couldn’t taste them, but people at the office enjoyed them – or maybe they were just buzzing from all the coffee and sugar!